Making It Make Sense

I have owned this domain for quite some time.

For the most part, I did nothing with it.

I bought it because I liked the idea of having my own website. I thought having an email address that ended in my own domain looked more professional than using a regular Gmail account. I imagined putting my credentials, work experience, and a few accomplishments in one place.

There was no grand strategy behind it.

Over the years, however, I kept finding new things to study, new fields to enter, and, admittedly, new licensure examinations to take.

Every time I passed another examination, the congratulations would eventually be followed by some version of the same questions.

Why do you keep taking these exams?

Where do you find the time?

What are you going to do with all these licenses?

For a long time, I did not have a particularly good answer.

There was always a reason for pursuing something at the time. A problem I wanted to understand. A role I wanted to perform better. An opportunity that I thought might open another door.

But there was no master plan.

Eventually, I found myself asking the same question.

What am I going to do with all of this?

This website is, in many ways, my attempt to answer it.

An Opportunity I Did Not Plan For

Before all of this, I thought I wanted to become a judge.

Before becoming a lawyer, I worked at the Commission on Elections, where part of my work involved drafting decisions and resolutions in election cases. I enjoyed studying the facts, examining the law, and working through how disputes should be resolved.

At the time, pursuing a career in the judiciary seemed like a natural direction.

Then I took the Bar Examinations.

I had resigned from my previous job to prepare for the Bar, so when the examinations were over, I had no position waiting for me.

Around that time, my best friend, Atty. Edward Arriba, approached me with an opportunity.

His law firm represented a candidate who had just won the mayoral election in Pagsanjan, Laguna. The incoming administration needed a lawyer willing to work in the municipality and eventually take on the responsibilities of a department head.

I was not from Laguna. I had no background in local government practice. I certainly had no carefully considered plan to build a career there.

But it was a good opportunity.

So I said yes.

I eventually became the Municipal Environment and Natural Resources Officer of Pagsanjan, while also serving as Officer-in-Charge of the General Services Office and Vice Chairperson of the Bids and Awards Committee.

It did not take long for me to realize how much I did not know.

The work required answers.

And when I did not have them, I had to find them.

So I studied.

Learning to Become Useful

Local government has a way of making job descriptions feel negotiable.

Several of my fellow department heads also wore more than one hat.

One of them was Engr. Imelda Iranon, the Municipal Assessor who also served as Municipal Planning and Development Coordinator and Chairperson of the Bids and Awards Committee. Apart from being an engineer, she was a licensed Real Estate Appraiser and Environmental Planner.

We became friends and often joked about the number of offices and responsibilities we were handling.

At some point, she started telling me that I should become an Environmental Planner too, so she could finally hand the MPDO over to me.

It was a joke.

At least, I think it started as one.

There was another running joke in the municipal government.

Whenever a department encountered a difficult problem, I would often be asked for my opinion. Sometimes the issue involved my office. Many times, it did not.

I remember asking, more than once, some version of: Am I the entire Municipality of Pagsanjan?

But underneath the jokes was something I took seriously.

The work required me to deal with problems I had never encountered before. A question could involve law, procurement, budgeting, property, environmental regulation, planning, engineering, politics, or the practical realities of running a local government.

The problems did not care about the boundaries of my profession.

Being a lawyer helped.

But it was not enough.

I wanted to become the kind of person who could be presented with a difficult problem, understand its different dimensions, and help find a workable solution.

I wanted to become useful.

Eventually, the jokes about becoming an Environmental Planner became a serious question.

Why not?

So I asked how I could qualify.

And I started studying again.

A Change in Direction

For all that Pagsanjan taught me, I eventually had to leave.

I had been living alone, away from my family. Then I got sick and needed surgery.

Before that could happen, I had to drive myself to the emergency room while I was in pain.

My colleagues helped take care of me, and I remain grateful to them for that.

But the experience forced me to confront something I had been ignoring.

I wanted to build a career closer to the people I wanted to build a life around.

So I left Pagsanjan.

That decision eventually brought me to the City Government of Biñan, where I was offered a position in the Mayor’s Office as Executive Assistant IV.

My work was now clearly defined. I handled litigation, reviewed contracts, and provided legal advice.

I was a lawyer doing legal work.

There was only one problem.

I had become accustomed to complexity.

I liked being presented with problems I did not immediately know how to solve. When things became too routine, I became restless.

So I kept looking for new things to learn.

Around this time, Engr. Iranon and I developed another running joke: I was going to catch up with all the letters after her name.

At the time, she was already a licensed Real Estate Appraiser and Environmental Planner, but not yet a Real Estate Broker.

So, naturally, we enrolled together in a Bachelor of Science in Real Estate Management program.

For her, the goal was to qualify as a Real Estate Broker.

For me, it was to qualify as both a Real Estate Broker and a Real Estate Appraiser.

What began partly as a joke between friends became another serious course of study.

And somewhere along the way, I apparently started taking licensure examinations for fun.

Making It Make Sense

Eventually, I passed the licensure examinations.

Then came the congratulations.

And, inevitably, the questions.

What are you going to do with all these licenses?

By then, I had started asking myself the same thing.

I did not want the qualifications I had worked for to become little more than additional letters after my name.

They had to lead somewhere.

So I started looking more carefully at the work I had already been doing.

My responsibilities in Biñan had expanded beyond purely legal work. I became involved in local economic development and investment promotion, worked closely with the business sector, and saw the questions that arise when companies establish, operate, and expand.

My best friend, Atty. Edward Arriba, served as the Business Permits and Licensing Officer, so many of our conversations naturally involved businesses, permits, investment, regulation, and the relationship between government and the private sector.

I also served as the city’s Data Protection Officer, which introduced another dimension of regulatory compliance to my work.

Gradually, I began to see a pattern.

Law. Government. Business. Real estate. Valuation. Planning. Regulation.

What had looked like a scattered collection of experiences and qualifications could, in fact, converge.

I found that convergence in Investment Strategy and Regulatory Affairs.

A company looking to establish operations does not encounter legal questions in isolation.

An investor acquiring property does not deal only with the transaction.

A developer planning a project must consider land acquisition, valuation, land use, permits, taxation, local government processes, regulation, and commercial realities.

These problems cross professional boundaries.

And I realized that this was exactly the kind of work I had spent years preparing myself to do.

The strange part is that I never planned it that way.

Looking back, one role seemed to prepare me for the next. One problem led me to another field. One opportunity introduced me to a new set of questions.

Perhaps I am simply making sense of things in hindsight.

Or perhaps there is something worth paying attention to when the different parts of your life begin pointing in the same direction.

I have decided to take it as a sign.

So, why not see where it leads?

Why I Am Writing

That brings me back to this website.

Years ago, I bought this domain because I thought having my own website and professional email address looked good.

That is still true, by the way.

But I have a better reason for building it now.

I want this website to become a body of work.

I want to write about the questions I encounter in investment, regulation, real estate, planning, law, government, and public policy.

Some articles will be technical. Others will examine problems I encounter in professional practice or ideas I believe are worth discussing. From time to time, I will write about the experiences, people, mistakes, and opportunities that continue to shape how I work.

I will take positions.

Some of them may be challenged.

I may occasionally be wrong.

That is fine.

There is no monopoly on good ideas, and I would rather contribute something worth discussing than wait until I have achieved enough to believe I have finally earned the right to speak.

I am still early in this journey.

I am still building my practice, developing my expertise, and figuring out exactly how the different parts of my professional life will work together.

Perhaps that is also why now is the right time to start writing.

This website will document that process.

If you are an investor, business owner, professional, policymaker, student, or simply someone interested in how law, property, government, regulation, and investment shape the decisions we make, I hope you find something useful here.

You may learn something from me.

I expect I will learn a great deal from the conversations that follow.

And if, somewhere along the way, this website encourages someone else to take their work more seriously, pursue an unfamiliar field, ask better questions, or become more intentional about what they are building, then that would be a good outcome too.

I spent the first part of my career collecting experiences, qualifications, and, apparently, professional licenses.

Now I am trying to make them mean something.

Welcome to the journey.